Jon Flanders' Blog

Finally some bits!

Monday, August 28, 2006 6:33:17 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

I've been teasing for a while about my Atlas-base Windows Workflow designer for a while.  Its just that although I had some basic functionality working months ago - it has taken me this long with all the other consulting and training I've been doing to actually get things working to what I consider a beta level.

So with this post I am announcing beta 1 of the Atlas Workflow Designer.  I am putting up source code - but I am releasing it under the MIT license (which basically means you can use it for any purpose - even commercial - you just have to leave my copyright notice in it so I get credit :)).

Any bug reports are welcome - although code reviews are not ;-).  Personally I am happy with the functionality - I am not necessarily happy with the way all the code is factored.  Some of it to be perfectly honest is a total hack.  Mostly in the Atlas based "class" that runs the designer in the browser.  There is some serious refactoring that needs to get done there, which I will be working on for future releases.  Also - the persistence layer (saving the xaml and rules to the database) isn't as layered as I'd like (I have plans for a workflow persistence provider so different stores can be easily plugged in).  Also the coupling between the javascript and the service is a little tight - but that may be unavoidable in this particular application.

The biggest thing to get working better is the property grid and rules.  As of now - all you can put in for rules is "true" (yes - I know this sucks - but making a near full-featured rule editor in the browser is another big task).   There also may be some other property types that cause trouble -  but I think that is mostly taken care of.  

You can put bug reports here or email them to me - but remember - I am giving this code away essentially - I am not charging you for it ;-).  But - if you are someone in need of consulting with WF (whether with designers or any other issues) please drop me a line :)

I'll try to post a camtasia of myself using it later so you can get a handle on how it works - plus there is a slightly weird issue in Mozilla (where you can drop the activities is pretty funky right now - but pretty much everything else works).  You'll need SQLExpress installed to get the persistence layer to work correctly (or import the mdf into SQLServer and change the connection string in the web.config). 

Anyway - enjoy - hopefully this will be useful.

AtlasWorkflowDesigner.zip (947.94 KB)

 |    #    Comments [6]   Tracked by:
http://weblogs.asp.net/gsusx/archive/2006/08/30/Atlas-WF-Designer.aspx [Pingback]
"Atlas Workflow Designer" (Weblog di Fabio Cozzolino) [Trackback]
http://www.dotnetside.org/blogs/fabio/archive/2006/08/31/Atlas-Workflow-Designer... [Pingback]

Tuesday, August 29, 2006 4:58:52 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Total newbie but figured I would ask anyways. I am getting an unhandled exception resulting in an error which could be to do with no remote connections on the SQL Server.

Any chance you would do a simple readme or better still an install video / camtasia?
Tuesday, August 29, 2006 5:00:17 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
I would guess you don't have SQLExpress installed. Either isntall SQLExpress 2005 or SQL Server 2005 - import the mdf file and change the connection string in the web.config
Wednesday, August 30, 2006 2:59:28 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
All works great now. For some reason SQL 2005 was casuing some issues. SQLExpress and all went away.

Quit a few small bugs. I'll report them all to you in an email but this is great work.
Tuesday, September 26, 2006 1:38:01 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
I'm sorry to bug you with this. I tried the code, everything is working great is VS and the ASP Dev Server.
But as soon as I publish it on IIS (6 under Win 2003), the icons and the designer surface won't show.
I opened up the directory security, but no success.
I will appreciate your kind suggestions

Costantino
Wednesday, August 15, 2007 8:00:18 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
your sample is more than great :)
But i want to ask if you release any update since the last year until now
Wednesday, August 15, 2007 8:06:58 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Rami - I haven't publicly - but I have helped a number of companies implement an AJAX based solution. If you are interested feel free to email me offline from this blog.
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